by Mark Roberts
Hendricks placed a hand on her shoulder and encouraged, ‘Keep going!’
‘After five reruns it clicked. It was the little boy’s face. It was his eyes in particular but his face... He looked... bored, like it was so normal and such a regular part of his life that he was tiring of it but it had no end in sight. Like his whole spirit had been broken and sucked out of him, leaving just a physical shell for the gratification of others. Their pleasure was the only point of his existence. I saw brokenness in a way I’d never seen it before. I saw the thousands of victims condensed into one little boy. As the woman he was masturbating climaxed, she made this noise in her throat like a wild animal. He yawned.’ What colour there was drained from her face and she opened the driver’s door wide.
‘How old was the boy?’ asked Hendricks.
‘About four.’ She leaned closer to Hendricks. ‘Every time I close my eyes, I see his face as if he was right in front of me.’
‘I know how much you’re hurting,’ said Hendricks. ‘And that pain isn’t pleasant but it’s a good thing that you can still be affected by the things you see. I’ve seen others doing your job turn to stone.’
In the silence that followed, Hendricks nursed a bleak notion and asked her, ‘How do you feel towards paedophiles?’
‘I hate them, every last one of them. And I’m glad Wilson and Jamieson have been murdered. If they’re dead they can’t harm any child.’
‘Are you talking to your husband about this, Carol?’
‘My husband?’
‘He knows you inside out. He can help you in ways I can’t.’
‘My husband? My husband walked out on me three weeks ago.’
Carol turned her body away and leaned over the ground. She vomited on to the tarmac. Hendricks placed a hand on the centre of her back, felt the beginning of convulsive sobbing.
‘Take a deep breath, Carol, hold it, take control.’ Hendricks stroked her back until the rising storm subsided and she sat up, wiping her mouth with the back of her right hand. ‘You’re a human being first and a police officer second. You can call me anytime.’ He dabbed the tears from her face and then gave her the tissue.
‘Thanks, Bill. You’d better get back to Mather Avenue but before you do...’ She handed him a brown envelope.
‘What’s this?’
‘It’s a picture of the little boy who’s breaking my heart. With the filthy cow who’s abusing him.’
Hendricks resisted the urge to decline and put the envelope in his coat pocket. ‘I’ve got to go, Carol.’
With an overwhelming weight of sadness, Hendricks waited at the wheel of his car until Carol White was gone. He took out his phone and texted Clay.
24
11.05 pm
Riley stood near the bottom of the stairs of 699 Mather Avenue, concluding that the killer had not only taken the landline telephone but had taken the address book that probably sat beside it. She figured the logic of such a theft. It took away a set of investigative shortcuts for the police and it gave the killer a potential treasure trove of future hits.
Show me your company, Riley remembered her grandmother’s favourite axiom, and I’ll show you who you are.
‘Gina!’ called Terry Mason from upstairs. ‘I’m in the study. I’ve got the roll-top desk and its drawers open, just as you asked.’
She ran quickly up the stairs and found herself in a room bare except for an open roll-top desk with four drawers, a desk seat, a pair of grey metal filing cabinets and an empty bin. Mason took a series of pictures of the empty surface of the desk and before she could ask why he was photographing it, she saw on the clean surface a laptop-sized rectangle at the centre hemmed in by dust.
Riley looked down at the skirting board near the bottom of the roll-top desk and saw a black plug in the electrical socket, a cable, a transformer and another length of cable leading to a jack plug.
‘The laptop,’ said Riley, thinking aloud. ‘I think the killer’s taken it, depriving us of another vital piece of evidence.’
‘You sound depressed, Gina. Let me cheer you up a little. Come and have a look see at this.’ Mason opened the top-left hand drawer to reveal a mini-junkyard of stationery, small coins, a ball of string, junk.
‘Looks like a load of old shite but you never know,’ said Riley.
‘I’ll sort through it, don’t you worry.’
Riley turned her attention to the top right-hand drawer and felt disappointed when she saw a smartly produced portfolio marked ‘Home Sweet Home Property Development and Management’. ‘Must’ve changed the name and taken the words Steven and Jamieson off any of his company’s stuff when it came out he’s an evil little fucker,’ she said. She took the document and placed it in the evidence bag that Mason handed her. ‘What’s in the bottom drawers, Terry?’
‘Bottom left’s empty. Wait for it, Gina.’ He closed the top right-hand drawer and opened the bottom right-hand drawer.
She smiled. ‘If I wasn’t married and you weren’t so ugly, I’d kiss you.’ She reached into the drawer and took out a green leather-bound address book.
Riley opened it, flicked through the pages and saw it was crammed with handwritten names and addresses.
Sergeant Paul Price, Mason’s assistant, entered the room.
‘When we’re done here, we’ll take the filing cabinets to Trinity Road and sort them out there, Pricey.’
‘Thanks, Terry,’ said Riley, holding up Steven Jamieson’s address book.
‘Happy hunting, Medusa!’ replied Mason.
25
11.13 pm
The only light on in the incident room of Trinity Road police station was the lamp on DC Barney Cole’s desk. Eyes pulverised by days and nights of trawling the internet to pin down Vindici websites, and reading document after document about the story of Justin Truman’s criminal life, Cole drifted into a light slumber. But as soon as he drifted from consciousness, he was jarred back into it.
Bam bam bam.
He sat up suddenly and, before he could react, the door opened wide and Poppy Waters, mid-twenties but looking years younger and with eyes that brimmed with intelligence behind her black-rimmed spectacles, almost skipped into the room with her open laptop in her arms.
‘I’m going to blow your mind, Barney!’ Usually calm and reserved, Poppy looked set to do a cartwheel.
‘What’s happening?’
‘Oh my God!’
‘Poppy!’ he said. ‘Have a seat.’ He rolled a seat from Hendricks’s desk and placed it beside him.
‘I think our luck’s turning,’ said Poppy. She placed her laptop on Cole’s desk and ran an index finger along the trackpad to bring the dark screen back to life. As Poppy typed in her password, she said, ‘So we’ve currently got two Vindici websites being run within the Liverpool area. We used geolocation software to establish that.’
‘Have you found out where in Liverpool?’
‘No. So I went to the Regional Internet Registry for Europe, the Réseaux IP Européens Network. I’ve given them all that we have and I’ve just had a phone call back from a Françoise Flamini. I told her it was within the context of a murder investigation and she stayed behind in her own time to work on it. She says she can mine for a closer match by using other data to narrow it down further, to a neighbourhood or an address even. She’ll pick it up again in the morning.’
‘You know, Poppy, I always liked the French. Is there anything else?’
‘Oh yeah, I’ve got to show you this. I’ve been monitoring both Liverpool Vindici sites on an hourly basis to see if I can register any new or unusual activity. Look at this.’
Justin Truman’s mugshot, the one taken when he was arrested, came up on the home page with the name ‘VINDICI’ in bold red letters above his head. She rolled the cursor to the gallery tab.
‘Look what’s come up in the last hour.’
She clicked the gallery and an image appeared that Cole had never seen before came on screen. It was a man in a white suit who
looked nothing like Justin Truman in the Metropolitan Police’s mugshot.
‘This is him,’ said Poppy. ‘Justin Truman. Vindici. One of the Liverpool websites posted it; the other hasn’t.’
Cole wondered how he could throw cold water over her without making her wet.
‘It’s the only photograph of him since he escaped from the prison convoy,’ said Poppy.
‘Justin Truman had thick dark hair. This man has short platinum-white hair—’
Poppy grabbed Cole’s wrist, the first time she had touched him. ‘Look at the buildings in the background. It’s a Mexican town. Look at the people around him. All dressed as skeletons and corpses. He’s the only one who isn’t, Barney. Look at his eyes.’
She zoomed in on his face and his eyes shone with kindness and light, smiling, always smiling.
A shiver ran through Cole’s core. ‘Show me the mugshot, Poppy.’
She returned to the home page and Cole examined Truman’s eyes.
‘The gallery picture please.’
He looked at the eyes of the man in the white suit, the man in the sunshine walking in the procession for the Day of the Dead.
‘Mugshot, Pop.’ He looked at the image and felt fire rip through his head. He examined the bone structure of Truman’s face following his arrest. ‘Gallery, please.’
The cheekbones, chin and nose on both pictures now seemed almost identical to Cole but the closest similarity was in the eyes. Cole’s body turned to stone. ‘My God, Poppy Waters, you have just blown my mind. That looks like it is Justin Truman. In Mexico.’
‘Look at what he’s holding in his hand, Barney, and look what he’s pointing to.’
Cole focused on the newspaper Vindici was holding. Mexico Star. He was indicating the date: 14 Octubre 2019. ‘The day David Wilson was murdered. And he was in Mexico at the time.’ He reached for his iPhone.
‘The person who runs this website absolutely adores Vindici. Quote: The greatest human being to have ever walked the face of the earth. Quote: Angel in human shape and true champion of children everywhere.’
‘You did better than well. You did brilliantly. Get a copy of this picture to Clay, Stone, Hendricks, Riley, me and the rest of the team.’ He dialled Clay’s number.
‘I already have done,’ said Poppy.
‘Keep bugging the service providers for any data whatsoever about these two websites and feed it to your contact in France. Great work, Poppy!’
Clay connected. ‘Barney, I just got the picture and an email from Poppy. Just double-checking. It was posted on a Liverpool-based website, right?’
‘Yes and I believe it’s definitely Justin Truman. Looks like he’s in Mexico.’
He heard her opening her car door.
‘I’ve just come out of the post-mortem. I’m heading back to Mather Avenue now. With the European RIR on our side, it looks like we’re closing in on someone who’s in direct touch with Justin Truman, someone who maybe knows who our girl is, someone who may even be our girl.’
As her car door shut, Cole asked, ‘Anything you want me to do, Eve?’
‘Yes.’ Her engine sparked into life and she pulled away. ‘I want to know more about Justin Truman. He wasn’t always a serial killer. Who was he before he became Vindici?’
26
11.23 pm
As she drove on to Edge Lane, Clay remembered that buildings in the neighbourhood had changed. St Michael’s was no longer a Catholic care home for children but was now student accommodation.
Gripping the wheel, Clay shivered as she saw the disused Littlewoods Building and the big news of twelve months standing: Money from the Americas had been attracted to the huge disused Art Deco building and in recent weeks work had started on making it safe and redeveloping the interior.
Clay looked at the entrance to Botanic Gardens and wished in vain that James Peace would walk out of the park on to Edge Lane to greet her.
She gave in to a momentary but impossible fantasy, that the grown-up version of Jimmy would leave the park and flag her car down as he crossed the dual carriageway. She pictured herself pulling up and walking to meet him halfway. As they embraced, she would ask, ‘What did you say to me that last time, Jimmy, when I was at Mrs Tripp’s window and you were in the back of the police car?’
Clay pulled over, half on the pavement, half on the road, and looked across the broad expanse of Edge Lane and whispered, ‘Rufus? Rufus!’
Clay stepped out of her car and, even though Botanic Gardens was illuminated by the bright lights overhead, she pictured it as it had been many years earlier, drowned in natural autumn sunlight.
Deep in her brain, a door opened and the still image of that day turned into a slow-motion film. Even though her mind was full of a day years ago when the weather had been hot, the sun shining and the entire population of St Michael’s Catholic Care Home for Children was out playing in the green fields of Botanic Gardens, the memory felt full of shadows and silent secrets.
Clay looked at the time on the dashboard – 11.25 in red LED lines – and recalled a moment from her childhood when she had been out walking on Mason Street with her protector Sister Philomena. She remembered laughing at an old lady as a bead of sweat dripped from the end of her nose like a dewdrop.
‘You’ll be old yourself one day,’ said Clay, out loud, recalling Sister Philomena’s words. It had been the closest to a telling-off that she had ever had from Sister Philomena.
‘I’m sorry.’
Philomena squeezed her hand. It was OK.
‘The only ones you should laugh at, Evette’ – her full name, used when Philomena wanted to make a point stick – ‘are the Devil and his followers. It’s the last thing they’ll expect you to do and the thing they’ll like least.’
Eve switched back to the day out in Botanic Gardens.
With her back turned momentarily to the fun and games on the grass, Eve had looked with awe at the huge Littlewoods Building on the other side of the park.
She gazed at the enormous white body and the tower that rose from the centre of the building. A submarine, she thought, not curved but all straight lines and sharp corners. She imagined it coming down from the skyline, sinking under Edge Lane into an imaginary arm of the River Mersey and setting off for the Pier Head and beyond to the Irish Sea.
‘Here you are, Eve...’ His voice came from behind her. Male, gentle, a voice that seemed to float up to the blue sky. She turned. He loomed over her and the sun was behind his head, obscuring his face. She knew his name. Christopher. But he had only been working at St Michael’s for a few weeks and he had never spoken to her. Just watched her. On a few occasions she’d turned suddenly and seen him. Watching. Unsmiling.
His arm reached out and he offered her a double-coned Mr Whippy ice cream smothered in sweet raspberry sauce.
She took the ice cream from him and felt the warmth of his palm on the biscuit of the cone. ‘Thank you, Christopher.’
She looked around. None of the other kids were holding ice creams. The music of the ice-cream van cruising the busy child-dense neighbourhood sounded ghostly.
‘What’s that music?’ she asked aloud. ‘From the ice-cream van?’
‘It’s “Für Elise” by Beethoven,’ replied Chris. ‘Do you like it?’
‘I don’t know. It’s kind of sad.’
‘You look awfully hot, Eve,’ he said. ‘Hot enough to buy an ice cream for.’
A cloud got in the way of the sun and his face became clear, his pale blue eyes and his stony smile.
‘Lick it before it melts and drips into the grass.’
She half turned away – she didn’t know why but she did – and dug her tongue into the fruity surface and the sweet body of the soft white ice cream. Eve drew a cocktail of ice cream and sauce into her mouth.
‘You look like you’re enjoying that, Eve.’
She swallowed the ice cream.
‘Für Elise’ stopped.
‘Thank you,’ she said, walking away towards t
he fun and games.
‘Eve, we need to talk about Rufus!’
‘Rufus?’ She stopped, turned. ‘But he’s either run away or been run over on Edge Lane.’
To her left, traffic zoomed in two directions down both carriageways of Edge Lane, and its roar echoed from the walls of the Littlewoods Building. The notion of Rufus being flattened on the unforgiving highway brought a pricking of tears to the backs of her eyes.
The jingle-jangle music of the ice-cream van started up again and Beethoven’s melody floated towards her.
‘Or...’ she said and hoped and prayed, ‘he’s still in the neighbourhood but has had to move on a few streets because of a scrap with some other stray cat.’
‘Well, Rufus has definitely, definitely done neither of those two things what you said no more, Eve Clay.’
‘How do you know that, Christopher?’
She felt melted ice cream, warm and sticky, crawling down the back and heel of her hand.
‘It’s all over your hand, Eve. You need to lick it off.’
‘Rufus? Just what do you mean by that?’
‘I mean I was, like, one of the last people to leave the house when we were all walking over here. Yeah? Yeah. Like, all the doors and windows were open because it was so hot like. So Mrs Tripp says to me, Chris, here are the keys. Go round and lock all the doors, shut the windows and follow the rest of us to Botanic Gardens.’
Within a slither of a moment, she said, ‘Why would Mrs Tripp give you such an important job when you’ve only been working there for a few weeks?’
He was silent for a moment, made a noise, mmmn, and then said, ‘Good question, good question, Eve.’ Silence. ‘I said exactly what you said to Maggie Anderson who’s been there, like, years. She said to me, It’s an initiation, she throws big jobs at new people to test them out, see if they’re any good. Anyway, do you want to know about Rufus or what no more?’
